It's a lovely sunny summer Saturday, and all over the country people will be getting married. It's a fair bet that many of the church weddings will have the reading taken from 1 Corinthians 13, and why not? It's a good time to talk about love. But I was reading a few verses from this chapter earlier, and I was struck by verse 6.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It's easy to read this long list of the things that love is or isn't, that love does or doesn't do, and nod and smile and think, "Yes, that's nice" without ever stopping to consider: love does not delight in evil? Of course love doesn't delight in evil! What do you take me for? Why would anyone delight in evil? Anyway, it's a wedding and I don't want to talk about evil, thank you very much. But Paul is telling the Corinthians about unconditional love, love which never gives up and never gives in. This is the love that God has for sinners, a love so huge that he was prepared to die for us. This is the love that we should have for each other.
So how do we love someone who does something wrong? (And that's every single human being on the planet, by the way.)
Do we gloss over their faults, ignore their sins, minimise their failings because we love them? Do we say "I know he's violent, I know she lies, but I can't help it, I just love him/her"? Do we act as though their wrongdoings don't matter? Love does not delight in evil. Love takes absolutely no pleasure at all in the wrong things people do. Love and evil don't go together, can't be held in creative tension, won't cancel one another out, any more than eating a salad with your burger will reduce the calorie content. Love doesn't look at a person and say "I'm going to like the bad things s/he does (or at least put up with them) because I love him/her as a whole human being."
And all of this is true when we try to love the person to whom we are closest, but often find it most difficult to love: ourselves. Self acceptance isn't saying that everything I do is OK. Healthy self esteem doesn't mean that I let myself off the hook for hurting other people, for being negligent, for deceiving and dissimulating. Love doesn't delight in evil. If I love myself not unconditionally but unquestioningly, uncritically, that's not really love.
Love does not delight in evil. Love rejoices with the truth.
The truth is that we are all sinners. We have all done things wrong, some of us more shockingly than others, but there's not many people who can make it through the day without a single wrong thought, word or action. When we acknowledge that, when we tell the truth about ourselves to ourselves and to others, that's when love rejoices. This could be a confession to another person, or simply a silent acknowledgement that I have failed, and in my failures I have hurt other people and damaged my own potential. Love rejoices then! When we tell the truth about ourselves, we open ourselves up to the possibility of being truly and intimately known. Love rejoices then! When we understand the truth that other people are sometimes messed up, sometimes thoughtless, sometimes deliberately cruel, and we don't love that about them, but we love them for their truthful existence in the present and their potential for the future, love rejoices!
There's no real delight in pretending that what's wrong is really OK. There's no delight in putting up with failings, in sweeping things under the carpet, in looking the other way. But in honesty, openness, admission of guilt, acknowledgement of failure and shortcomings, there is joy, and it is joy like no other, because it is the joy of rejoicing love!
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